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[ 1950s ] [
1960s ] [ 1970s ] [
1980s ] [ 1990s ] [
Growth ] [ FAQ ] [
Sources ]
Hobbes' Internet Timeline v2.5
by
Robert
H'obbes' Zakon
Internet Evangelist
The MITRE Corporation
Hobbes' Internet Timeline Copyright (c)1993-6 by Robert H
Zakon. Permission is granted for use of this document in whole or
in part for non commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is
given to the author/maintainer. A copy of the material the Timeline
appears in is appreciated. For commercial uses, please contact the
author first.
The author wishes to acknowledge the
Internet Society for hosting
this document, and the many Net folks who have contributed
suggestions and helped with the author's
genealogy search.
Additional information about the Internet may be found at
Hobbes' Internet
World
1950s
- 1957
- USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In
response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) within the Department of
Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology
applicable to the military (:amk:)
1960s
- 1962
- Paul
Baran, RAND: "On Distributed Communications Networks"
- Packet-switching (PS) networks; no single outage point
- 1965
- ARPA sponsors study study on "cooperative network of
time-sharing computers"
- TX-2 at MIT Lincoln Lab and Q-32 at System Development
Corporation (Santa Monica, CA) are directly linked (without
packet switches)
- 1967
- ACM Symposium on Operating
Principles
- Plan presented for a packet-switching network
- First design paper on ARPANET published by Lawrence G.
Roberts
- National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England
develops NPL Data Network under D. W. Davies
- 1968
- PS-network presented to the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA)
- 1969
- ARPANET commissioned by DoD for research into networking
- First node at UCLA [Network Measurements Center - SDS SIGMA
7:SEX] and soon after at: [legend = function - system:os]
- Stanford Research Institute (SRI) [NIC -
SDS940/Genie]
- UCSB [Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics - IBM
360/75:OS/MVT]
- U of Utah [Graphics (hidden line removal) - DEC
PDP-10:Tenex]
- use of Information Message Processors (IMP) [Honeywell 516
mini computer with 12K of memory] developed by Bolt Beranek and
Newman, Inc. (BBN)
- First Request for Comment (RFC): "Host Software" by Steve
Crocker
- U of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State U establish
X.25-based Merit network for students, faculty, alumni (:sw1:)
1970s
- Store-and-forward networks
- Used electronic mail technology and extended it to
conferencing
- 1970
- ALOHAnet developed by Norman Abrahamson, U of Hawaii (:sk2:)
- connected to the ARPANET in 1972
- ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP).
- 1971
- 15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, U of Utah, BBN, MIT,
RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU,
NASA/Ames
- Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages
across a distributed network. The original program was derived
from two others: an intra-machine email program (SNDMSG) and an
experimental file transfer program (CPYNET) (:amk:irh:)
- 1972
- International Conference on Computer Communications with
demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal
Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn.
- InterNetworking Working Group (INWG) created to address need
for establishing agreed upon protocols. Chairman: Vinton Cerf.
- Telnet specification (RFC 318)
- 1973
- First international connections to the ARPANET: University
College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment (Norway)
- Bob Metcalfe's Harvard PhD Thesis outlines idea for
Ethernet
(:amk:)
- Bob Kahn poses Internet problem, starts internetting research
program at ARPA. Vinton Cerf sketches gateway architecture in
March on back of envelope in hotel lobby in San Francisco (:vgc:)
- Cerf and Kahn present basic Internet ideas at INWG in
September at U of Sussex, Brighton, UK (:vgc:)
- File Transfer specification (RFC 454)
- 1974
- Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish "A Protocol for Packet Network
Intercommunication" which specified in detail the design of a
Transmission Control Program (TCP). [IEEE Trans Comm] (:amk:)
- BBN opens Telenet, the first public packet data service (a
commercial version of ARPANET) (:sk2:)
- 1975
- Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA (now
DISA)
- "Jargon File",
by Raphael Finkel at SAIL, first released (:esr:)
- Shockwave Rider written by John Brunner (:pds:)
- 1976
- Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an e-mail
(various Net folks have e-mailed dates ranging from 1971 to 1978;
1976 was the most submitted and the only found in print)
- UUCP
(Unix-to-Unix CoPy) developed at AT&T; Bell Labs and distributed
with UNIX
one year later.
- 1977
- THEORYNET created by Larry Landweber at U of Wisconsin
providing electronic mail to over 100 researchers in computer
science (using a locally developed email system and TELENET for
access to server).
- Mail specification (RFC 733)
- Tymshare launches Tymnet
- First demonstration of ARPANET/Packet Radio Net/SATNET
operation of Internet protocols with BBN-supplied gateways in July
(:vgc:)
- 1979
- Meeting between U of Wisconsin, DARPA,
NSF, and computer scientists
from many universities to establish a Computer Science Department
research computer network (organized by Larry Landweber).
- USENET
established using UUCP between Duke and UNC by Tom Truscott, Jim
Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. All original groups were under net.*
hierarchy.
- First MUD, MUD1, by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw at U of
Essex
- ARPA establishes the Internet Configuration Control Board
(ICCB)
- Packet Radio Network (PRNET) experiment starts with DARPA
funding. Most communications take place between mobile vans.
ARPANET connection via SRI.
1980s
- 1981
- BITNET, the
"Because It's Time NETwork"
- Started as a cooperative network at the City University of
New York, with the first connection to Yale (:feg:)
- Original acronym stood for 'There' instead of 'Time' in
reference to the free NJE protocols provided with the IBM
systems
- Provides electronic mail and listserv servers to distribute
information, as well as file transfers
- CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) built by a collaboration of
computer scientists and U. of Delaware, Purdue U., U. of
Wisconsin, RAND Corporation and BBN through seed money granted by
NSF to provide networking services (specially email) to university
scientists with no access to ARPANET. CSNET later becomes known as
the Computer and Science Network. (:amk,lhl:)
- Minitel (Teletel) is deployed across France by France Telecom.
- True Names written by Vernor Vinge (:pds:)
- 1982
- DCA and ARPA establishes the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly
known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET. (:vgc:)
- This leads to one of the first definitions of an "internet"
as a connected set of networks, specifically those using
TCP/IP, and "Internet" as connected TCP/IP internets.
- DoD declares TCP/IP suite to be standard for DoD (:vgc:)
- EUnet (European UNIX Network)
is created by EUUG to provide email and USENET services. (:glg:)
- original connections between the Netherlands, Denmark,
Sweden, and UK
- External Gateway Protocol (RFC 827) specification. EGP is used
for gateways between networks.
- 1983
- Name server developed at U of Wisconsin, no longer requiring
users to know the exact path to other systems.
- Cutover from NCP to TCP/IP (1 January)
- CSNET / ARPANET gateway put in place
- ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET; the latter became
integrated with the Defense Data Network created the previous
year.
- Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX
which includes IP networking software.
- Need switches from having a single, large time sharing
computer connected to Internet per site, to connection of an
entire local network.
- Internet
Activities Board (IAB) established, replacing ICCB
- Berkeley releases 4.2BSD incorporating TCP/IP (:mpc:)
- EARN (European Academic and
Research Network) established. Very similar to the way BITNET
works with a gateway funded by IBM.
- FidoNet
developed by Tom Jennings.
- 1984
- Domain Name
Server (DNS)
introduced.
- # of hosts breaks 1,000
- JUNET (Japan Unix Network) established using UUCP.
- JANET (Joint Academic
Network) established in the UK using the Coloured Book protocols;
previously SERCnet.
- Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET (mod.*)
- Neuromancer written by William Gibson
- 1985
- Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
(WELL) started
- 100 years to the day of the last spike being driven on the
cross-Canada railroad, the last Canadian university is connected
to BITNET in a one year effort to have coast-to-coast
connectivity. (:kf1:)
- 1986
- NSFNET created (backbone speed of 56Kbps)
- NSF establishes 5 super-computing centers to provide
high-computing power for all (JVNC@Princeton, PSC@Pittsburgh,
SDSC@UCSD, NCSA@UIUC, Theory Center@Cornell).
- This allows an explosion of connections, especially from
universities.
- NSF-funded SDSCNET, JVNCNET, SURANET, and NYSERNET operational
(:sw1:)
- The first Freenet
(Cleveland)
comes on-line 16 July under the auspices of the Society for Public
Access Computing (SoPAC). Later Freenet program management assumed
by the National Public Telecomputing Network
(NPTN) in 1989 (:sk2,rab:)
- Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP)
designed to enhance Usenet news performance over TCP/IP.
- Mail Exchanger (MX) records developed by Craig Partridge allow
non-IP network hosts to have domain addresses.
- The great USENET name change; moderated newsgroups changed in
1987.
- BARRNET (Bay Area Regional Research Network) established using
high speed links. Operational in 1987.
- 1987
- NSF signs a cooperative agreement to manage the NSFNET
backbone with Merit Network,
Inc. (IBM and MCI involvement was through an agreement with
Merit). Merit, IBM, and MCI later founded ANS.
- UUNET is founded with Usenix
funds to provide commercial UUCP and Usenet access. Originally an
experiment by Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell
- 1000th
RFC: "Request For Comments reference guide"
- # of hosts breaks 10,000
- # of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000
- 1988
- 1 November - Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting
~6,000 of the 60,000 hosts on the Internet (:ph1:)
- CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) formed by DARPA in
response to the needs exhibited during the Morris worm incident.
Year Reports Advisories | Year Reports Advisories
---- ------- ---------- + ---- ------- ----------
1988 x 1 | 1993 1,300 18
1989 x 7 | 1994 2,300 15
1990 12 130 | 1995 2,412 18
1991 23 x |
1992 21 800 |
- DoD chooses to adopt OSI and sees use of TCP/IP as an interim.
US Government OSI Profile (GOSIP) defines the set of protocols to
be supported by Government purchased products (:gck:)
- Los Nettos network created with no federal funding, instead
supported by regional members (founding: Caltech, TIS, UCLA, USC,
ISI).
- NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1 (1.544Mbps)
- CERFnet (California Education and Research Federation network)
founded by Susan Estrada.
- Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed by Jarkko Oikarinen
(:zby:)
- First Canadian regionals join NSFNET: ONet via Cornell, RISQ
via Princeton, BCnet via U of Washington (:ec1:)
- FidoNet gets connected to the Net, enabling the exchange of
e-mail and news (:tp1:)
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Canada, Denmark, Finland,
France, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
- 1989
- # of hosts breaks 100,000
- RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens)
formed (by European service providers) to ensure the necessary
administrative and technical coordination to allow the operation
of the pan-European IP Network. (:glg:)
- First relays between a commercial electronic mail carrier and
the Internet: MCI Mail through the Corporation for the National
Research Initiative (CNRI), and Compuserve through Ohio State U
(:jg1,ph1:)
- Corporation for Research and Education Networking
(CREN) is formed by the merge
of CSNET into BITNET
- Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF) comes into existence under the IAB
- AARNET - Australian Academic Research Network - set up by AVCC
and CSIRO; introduced into service the following year (:gmc:)
- Cuckoo's Egg written by Clifford Stoll tells the real-life
tale of a German cracker group who infiltrated numerous US
facilities
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Australia, Germany, Israel,
Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, UK
1990s
- 1990
- ARPANET ceases to exist
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) is founded by Mitch Kapor
- Archie released by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan
at McGill
- Hytelnet released by Peter Scott (U of Saskatchewan)
- The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first
commercial provider of Internet dial-up access
- ISO Development Environment
(ISODE) developed to provide an approach for OSI migration for the
DoD. ISODE software allows OSI application to operate over TCP/IP
(:gck:)
- CA*net formed by 10 regional networks as national Canadian
backbone with direct connection to NSFNET (:ec1:)
- The first remotely operated machine to be hooked up to the
Internet, the Internet Toaster, (controlled via SNMP) makes its
debut at Interop.
[picture]
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Argentina, Austria, Belgium,
Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Ireland, South Korea, Spain,
Switzerland
- 1991
- Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. formed by
General Atomics (CERFnet), Performance Systems International, Inc.
(PSInet), and UUNET Technologies, Inc. (AlterNet), after NSF lifts
restrictions on the commercial use of the Net (:glg:)
- Wide Area Information Servers
(WAIS), invented by Brewster Kahle, released by Thinking
Machines Corporation
- Gopher released
by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the U of Minn
- World-Wide Web (WWW) released
by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee
developer (:pb1:)
- PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) released by Philip Zimmerman (:ad1:)
- US High Performance Computing Act (Gore 1) establishes the
National Research and Education Network (NREN)
- NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3 (44.736Mbps)
- NSFNET traffic passes 1 trillion bytes/month and 10 billion
packets/month
- Start of JANET IP Service (JIPS) which signalled the
changeover from Coloured Book software to TCP/IP within the UK
academic network. IP was initially 'tunnelled' within X.25.
(:gst:)
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Croatia, Czech Repulic, Hong
Kong, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan,
Tunisia
- 1992
- Internet Society (ISOC) is chartered
- # of hosts breaks 1,000,000
- First MBONE audio multicast (March) and video multicast
(November)
- IAB reconstituted as the Internet Architecture Board and
becomes part of the Internet Society
- Veronica, a gopherspace search tool, is released by UofNevada
- World Bank comes
on-line
- Internet Hunt started by Rick Gates
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Cameroon, Cyprus, Ecuador,
Estonia, Kuwait, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Thailand, Venezuela
- 1993
- InterNIC created by NSF
to provide specific Internet services: (:sc1:)
- directory and database services (AT&T;)
- registration services (Network Solutions Inc.)
- information services (General Atomics/CERFnet)
- US White House comes on-line
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/):
- President Bill Clinton: president@whitehouse.gov
- Vice-President Al Gore: vice-president@whitehouse.gov
- First Lady Hillary Clinton: root@whitehouse.gov (-:rhz:-)
- Worms of a new kind find their way around the Net - WWW Worms
(W4), joined by Spiders, Wanderers, Crawlers, and Snakes ...
- Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting (:sk2:)
- United Nations (UN) come
on-line (:vgc:)
- US National Information Infrastructure Act
- Businesses and media really take notice of the Internet
- Mosaic takes the Internet by storm; WWW proliferates at a
341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is
997%.
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Egypt,
Fiji, Ghana, Guam, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Liechtenstein,
Peru, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE, Virgin
Islands
- 1994
- ARPANET/Internet celebrates 25th anniversary
- Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet
(Lexington and Cambridge, Mass., USA)
- US Senate and House
provide information servers
- Shopping malls arrive on the Internet
- First cyberstation, RT-FM, broadcasts from Interop in Las
Vegas
- The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)
suggests that GOSIP should incorporate TCP/IP and drop the
"OSI-only" requirement (:gck:)
- Arizona law firm of
Canter
& Siegel "spams" the Internet with email advertising green
card lottery services; Net citizens flame back
- NSFNET traffic passes 10 trillion bytes/month
- Yes, it's true - you can now order pizza from the Hut online
- WWW edges out telnet to become 2nd most popular service on the
Net (behind ftp-data) based on % of packets and bytes traffic
distribution on NSFNET
- Japanese Prime Minister on-line
(http://www.kantei.go.jp/)
- UK's HM Treasury on-line
(http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/)
- New Zealand's Info Tech Prime Minister on-line
(http://www.govt.nz/)
- First Virtual, the first
cyberbank, open up for business
- Radio stations start rockin' (rebroadcasting) round the clock
on the Net: WXYC at UofNC, WJHK at UofKS-Lawrence, KUGS at Western
WA U.
- Trans-European Research and Education Network Association
(TERENA) is formed by the
merge of RARE and EARN, with representatives from 38 countries as
well as CERN and ECMWF.
TERERNA's aim is to "promote and participate in the development of
a high quality international information and telecommunications
infrastructure for the benefit of research and education"
- Countries connecting to NSFNET: Algeria, Armenia, Bermuda,
Burkina Faso, China, Colombia, French Polynesia, Jamaica, Lebanon,
Lithuania, Macau, Morocco, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger,
Panama, Philippines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Uruguay,
Uzbekistan
- 1995
- NSFNET
reverts back to a research network. Main US backbone traffic
now routed through interconnected network providers
- Hong Kong police disconnect all but 1 of the colony's Internet
providers in search of a hacker. 10,000 people are left without
Net access. (:api:)
- RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in
near real-time
- Radio HK, the first 24
hr., Internet-only radio station starts broadcasting
- WWW surpasses ftp-data in March as the service with greatest
traffic on NSFNet based on packet count, and in April based on
byte count
- Traditional online dial-up systems
(Compuserve,
American Online,
Prodigy) begin to provide
Internet access
- A number of Net related companies go public, with
Netscape leading the pack with the
3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value (9 August)
- Thousands in Minneapolis-St. Paul (USA) lose Net access after
transients start a bonfire under a bridge at the U of Minn.
causing fiber-optic cables to melt (30 July)
- Registration
of domain names is no longer free. Beginning 14 September, a
$50 annual fee has been imposed, which up until now was subsidized
by NSF. NSF continues to pay for .edu registration, and on an
interim basis for .gov
- The Vatican comes on-line
(http://www.vatican.va/)
- The Canadian Government comes on-line
(http://canada.gc.ca/)
- The first official Internet wiretap was successful in helping
the Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) aprehend
three individuals who were illegally manufacturing and selling
cell phone cloning equipment and electronic devices
- Operation Home
Front connects, for the first time, soldiers in the field with
their families back home via the Internet.
- Richard White becomes the first person to be declared a
munition, under the USA's arms export control laws, because of an
RSA file security encryption program emblazoned on his arm
(:wired496:)
- Technologies of the Year: WWW, Search engines
- Emerging Technologies: Mobile code (JAVA, JAVAscript),
Virtual environments (VRML), Collaborative tools
- 1996
- The Internet 1996 World
Exposition - the first World's Fair to take place on the
Internet
- Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication
companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology (which has
been around for years)
- The controversial US Communications Decency Act becomes law in
the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials
over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an
injunction against its enforcement.
- 9,272 organizations find themselves unlisted after the
InterNIC drops their name service as a result of not having paid
their domain name fee
- American OnLine (AOL) suffers a 19 hour outage, bringing into
question whether ISP's will be able to handle the growing number
of users
- Restrictions on Internet use around the world:
- China: requires users and ISPs to register with the
police
- Germany: cuts off access to some newsgroups carried
on Compuserve
- Saudi Arabia: confines Internet access to
universities and hospitals
- Singapore: requires political and religious content
providers to register with the state
- New Zealand: classifies computer disks as "publications"
that can be censored and seized
- source: Human Rights Watch
- Country domains registered: Qatar (QA), Vientiane (LA),
Djibouti (DJ), Niger (NE), Central African Republic (CF),
Mauretania (MF), Oman (OM), Norfolk Island (NF), Tuvalu (TV),
French Polynesia (PF), Syria (SY), Aruba (AW), Cambodia (KH)
- Technologies of the Year: Search engines, JAVA,
Internet Phone
- Emerging Technologies: Virtual environments (VRML),
Collaborative tools, Internet appliance
Growth
Internet growth:
Date Hosts | Date Hosts Networks Domains
----- --------- + ----- --------- -------- -------
1969 4 | 07/89 130,000 650 3,900
04/71 23 | 10/89 159,000 837
06/74 62 | 10/90 313,000 2,063 9,300
03/77 111 | 01/91 376,000 2,338
08/81 213 | 07/91 535,000 3,086 16,000
05/82 235 | 10/91 617,000 3,556 18,000
08/83 562 | 01/92 727,000 4,526
10/84 1,024 | 04/92 890,000 5,291 20,000
10/85 1,961 | 07/92 992,000 6,569 16,300
02/86 2,308 | 10/92 1,136,000 7,505 18,100
11/86 5,089 | 01/93 1,313,000 8,258 21,000
12/87 28,174 | 04/93 1,486,000 9,722 22,000
07/88 33,000 | 07/93 1,776,000 13,767 26,000
10/88 56,000 | 10/93 2,056,000 16,533 28,000
01/89 80,000 | 01/94 2,217,000 20,539 30,000
| 07/94 3,212,000 25,210 46,000
| 10/94 3,864,000 37,022 56,000
| 01/95 4,852,000 39,410 71,000
| 07/95 6,642,000 61,538 120,000
| 01/96 9,472,000 93,671 240,000
| 07/96 12,881,000 134,365 488,000
Figure: Internet hosts
Figure: Internet networks and domains
Worldwide networks growth: (I)nternet (B)ITNET (U)UCP
(F)IDONET (O)SI
____# Countries____ ____# Countries____
Date I B U F O Date I B U F O
----- --- --- --- --- --- ----- --- --- --- --- ---
09/91 31 47 79 49 08/93 59 51 117 84 31
12/91 33 46 78 53 02/94 62 51 125 88 31
02/92 38 46 92 63 07/94 75 52 129 89 31
04/92 40 47 90 66 25 11/94 81 51 133 95 --
08/92 49 46 89 67 26 02/95 86 48 141 98 --
01/93 50 50 101 72 31 06/95 96 47 144 99 --
04/93 56 51 107 79 31 06/96 134 -- 146 108 --
Figure: Worldwide networks growth
WWW growth:
Date Sites | Date Sites
----- ---------- + ----- ----------
06/93 130 | 06/95 23,500
12/93 623 | 01/96 100,000
06/94 2,738 | 06/96 230,000
12/94 10,022 |
USENET growth:
Date Sites ~MB ~Posts Groups | Date Sites ~MB ~Posts Groups
---- ----- --- ------ ------ + ---- ------- --- ------ ------
1979 3 2 3 | 1986 2200 2.0 946 241
1980 15 10 | 1987 5200 2.1 957 259
1981 150 0.05 20 | 1988 7800 4.4 1933 381
1982 400 35 | HELP: Where is data archived for
1983 600 120 | this period 1989-1991?
1984 900 225 | 1992 63,000 42 17,556
1985 1300 1.0 375 | 1993 69,000 50 19,362
| 1994 190,000 190 72,755
~ approximate: MB - megabytes per day, Posts - articles per day
Additional growth charts (square root, logarithmic) available from
http://www.is-bremen.de/~mhi/inetgrow.htm.
Hobbes' Internet Timeline FAQ
- 1. Why did you compile Hobbes' Internet Timeline?
- For use in the Internet courses I taught: Introduction to the
Internet, Internet Tools Administration, and Net Surfing 101.
- 2. How do I get Hobbes' Internet Timeline?
- The Timeline is archived at:
http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html.
If you prefer a copy via e-mail, send a blank message to
timeline@hobbes.mitre.org. For comments/corrections please use
hobbes@hobbes.mitre.org.
- 3. What do you do at MITRE?
- I design the soccer shoe of the future (wrong MITRE :-)
Actually, I wear the following hats: Net Evangelist, HCI Engineer,
Systems Integrator, Information Engineer, NIDR Administrator, Lead
Scientist, Instructor, He with the Most Toys
- 4. Why don't you list the # of Internet users?
- This is too controversial, and relatively inaccurate, an issue
which the author does not want to get flamed or spammed for. His
guess would be between 1 (himself) and 5 billion (but then again,
one never knows if you're a dog on the Net).
- 5. Is your license plate really NET SURF?
- Yes, and there is a frame around it with INTERNET at the top,
and my e-mail address at the bottom. (My wife is too embarrassed
to drive it:) Oh, and the bumper sticker says "I'd Rather Be Net
Surfing"
- 6. Can I re-print the Timeline or use parts of it for ... ?
- Drop me an e-mail. The answer is most likely (though don't
assume) 'yes' for non-profit use, and 'maybe' for for-profit; but
to be sure you are not going to break any copyright laws, drop me
an e-mail and wait for a reply.
- [ I realize the question below is outdated, but I leave it as
proof of my prediction powers :-]
- 7. Who do you think is going to win the '94 World Cup?
- Brasil, of course! (I was born in Rio de Janeiro ...)
- 8. Peddie (Ala Viva!), CWRU (North Side), Amici Usque Ad Aras
(OH Epsilon)
- E-mail me if you know
Sources
Hobbes' Internet Timeline was compiled from a number of sources, with some
of the stand-outs being:
Cerf, Vinton (as told to Bernard Aboba). "How the Internet Came to Be."
This article appears in "The Online User's Encyclopedia," by Bernard Aboba.
Addison-Wesley, 1993.
Hardy, Henry. "The History of the Net." Master's Thesis, School of
Communications, Grand Valley State University.
http://www.ocean.ic.net/ftp/doc/nethist.html
Hardy, Ian. "The Evolution of ARPANET email." History Thesis, UC Berkeley.
http://server.berkeley.edu/virtual-berkeley/email_history
Hauben, Ronda and Michael. "The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net."
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
Kulikowski, Stan II. "A Timeline of Network History." (author's email below)
Quarterman, John. "The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems
Worldwide." Bedford, MA: Digital Press. 1990
"ARPANET, the Defense Data Network, and Internet". Encyclopedia of
Communications, Volume 1. Editors: Fritz Froehlich, Allen Kent.
New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc. 1991
Internet growth summary compiled from:
- zone program reports maintained by Mark Lottor at:
ftp://ftp.nw.com/pub/zone/
- connectivity table maintained by Larry Landweber at:
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/connectivity_table/
WWW growth summary is available from:
- web growth summary page by Matthew Gray of MIT:
http://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html
USENET growth summary compiled from Quarterman and Hauben sources above,
and news.lists postings. Lots of historical USENET postings also provided
by Tom Fitzgerald (fitz@wang.com).
Many of the URLs provided by Arnaud Dufour (arnaud.dufour@hec.unil.ch)
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Contributors to Hobbes' Internet Timeline have their initials next to the
contributed items in the form (:zzz:) and are:
ad1 - Arnaud Dufour (arnaud.dufour@hec.unil.ch)
amk - Alex McKenzie (mckenzie@bbn.com)
ec1 - Eric Carroll (eric@enfm.utcc.utoronto.ca)
esr - Eric S. Raymond (esr@locke.ccil.org)
feg - Farrell E. Gerbode (farrell@is.rice.edu)
gck - Gary C. Kessler (kumquat@hill.com)
glg - Gail L. Grant (grant@openmarket.com)
gmc - Grant McCall (g.mccall@unsw.edu.au)
gst - Graham Thomas (G.S.Thomas@uel.ac.uk)
irh - Ian R Hardy (hardy@uclink2.berkeley.edu)
jg1 - Jim Gaynor (gaynor@agvax.ag.ohio.state.edu)
kf1 - Ken Fockler (fockler@hq.canet.ca)
lhl - Larry H. Landweber (lhl@cs.wisc.edu)
mpc - Mellisa P. Chase (pc@mitre.org)
pb1 - Paul Burchard (burchard@cs.princeton.edu)
pds - Peter da Silva (peter@baileynm.com)
ph1 - Peter Hoffman (hoffman@ece.nps.navy.mil)
rab - Roger A. Bielefeld (rab@hal.cwru.edu)
sc1 - Susan Calcari (susanc@is.internic.net)
sk2 - Stan Kulikowski (stankuli@uwf.bitnet) - see sources section
sw1 - Stephen Wolff (swolff@cisco.com)
tp1 - Tim Pozar (pozar@kumr.lns.com)
vgc - Vinton Cerf (vcerf@isoc.org) - see sources section
zby - Zenel Batagelj (zenel.batagelj@uni-lj.si)
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) ;-) Help the Author (-: (-: (-: (-: (-: (-: (-:
The author is on an eternal genealogical search. If you know of someone
whose last name is Zakon or could spare 1 minute to check your local phone
book, please e-mail any info (i.e., name, phone, address, city) to
rhz@po.cwru.edu; your help is greatly appreciated.
Help update: Thanks to Net folks, 39 new Zakon's have been found so far, making
the current total around 175! (this after a decade of research)
Archive-name: Hobbes' Internet Timeline v2.5
Archive-location: http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
Last-updated: 15 August 1996
Maintainer: Robert H'obbes' Zakon, zakon@info.isoc.org
Description:
An Internet timeline highlighting some of the key events and technologies
which helped shape the Internet as we know it today.
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